Applicants reported in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, 1979, Vol. 22 at pages 855 and 1367 on a series of thiosemicarbazones derived from 2-acetylpyridine which possess significant antimalarial activity. The molecular features which have been shown to be essential for antimalarial activity are the presence of a 2-pyridylalkylidene moiety, an attached thiocarbonyl or selenocarbonyl group (in contrast to a carbonyl group) as reported in Eur. J. Med. Chem., 1981, Vol. 16, page 317, and the presence of certain bulky substituents at position N.sup.4. These are the same features which would be expected to produce effective transition metal chelating properties. The formation of metal complexes has been implicated in the mechanism of antitumor activity of the structurally related series of 2-formylpyridine thiosemicarbazones as described by F. A. French et al, J. Med. Chem., 1970, Vol. 13, page 1117.
Saryan et al reported in J. Med. Chem., 1979, Vol. 22, page 1218 that the iron complexes of some alpha-N-heterocyclic thiosemicarbazones are three to six-fold more active as inhibitors of ribonucleotide reductase than the free ligands. They also noted an enhancement of antitumor activity upon complexation. The antitumor properties of a number of transition metal complexes of methyl 3-[1-(2-pyridyl)-ethylidene]carbodithioate (I) have been reported by Das and Livingstone in Br. J. Cancer, 1978, Vol. 37, page 466. The chloro Ni(II) complex of compound I was the most active against P388 leukemia in mice, having a T/C of 153% at a dose of 6.2 mg/kg. The chloro Cu(II) complex was less active, having a T/C of 115% at a dose 0.8 mg/kg. ##STR1##
In view of these considerations, applicants decided to prepare transition metal complexes of several selected 2-acetyl- and 2-propionylpyridine thiosemicarbazones and selenosemicarbazones in order to investigate their antimalarial and their antitumor properties.